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Sunday, 6 May 2012

What is the Church?

The glory and riches of the Catholic Church, the gift of Almighty God to His human family.

Joe writes:In the just ended ecclesia effort by the
Church in South Africa to catechise its members, we witnessed the coming into
fruition of a ‘not so new concept’, which teaches that we are Church. May be it
would be good at this point to examine why the doctrines and dogmas and even
liturgy cannot be changed.

The papal oath first taken by Pope Saint Agatho on
June 27, 678 says:

[1st stanza] I vow to change nothing of the received
Tradition, and nothing thereof I have found before me guarded by my
God-pleasing predecessors, to encroach upon, to alter, or to permit any
innovation therein;

[2nd stanza] To the contrary: with glowing affection as
her truly faithful student and successor, to safeguard reverently the passed-on
good, with my whole strength and utmost effort;

[4th stanza] I swear to God Almighty and the Saviour
Jesus Christ that I will keep whatever has been revealed through Christ and His
Successors and whatever the first councils and my predecessors have defined and
declared.

… etc.

This is a pretty strong declaration that
compels the Holy Father to honour Sacred Tradition, to uphold and lead through
his example that truly the Church’s soul and guide is the Holy Spirit, from
that first Pentecost to our day.

The Baltimore Catechism defines Church as:

The Church is the congregation of all those who profess the faith of
Christ, partake of the same Sacraments, and are governed by their lawful
pastors under one visible head.

In question 120, the same catechism asks why
Christ founded the Church and answers:

Christ founded the Church to teach, govern, sanctify, and save all
men.

The Catechism of Pope St Pius X defines the
Church as:

The Catholic Church is the Union or Congregation of all the baptized
who, still living on earth, profess the same Faith and the same Law of Jesus
Christ, participate in the same Sacraments, and obey their lawful Pastors,
particularly the Roman Pontiff.

… if we would define and describe this true Church of Jesus Christ–
which is the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church– we shall find no
expression more noble, more sublime, or more divine, than the phrase which
calls it ‘the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.

Even a passing look at these teachings and
many others expresses a fundamental convergence at the union in faith upheld by
believers in the Messiah Jesus Christ to which each of them is initiated
through the waters of baptism and glued together by a common faith nourished by
the Sacraments. Needless to say, such a ‘common faith’ cannot by necessity be
reduced to the feelings and emotions of each individual believer. Feelings and
emotions are of the physical senses and these are inconsistent, easily swayed
and cannot be used to define doctrine. ‘What do we believe?’ or rather ‘What should be
believed?’ Questions such as these gave rise to ‘doctrine and dogma’, because
to enter a ‘communion of faith’ demands the pre-existence of decreed truth to
which as a believer I must freely consent or else there is no communion in
faith. For the Christian this assertion is rooted in the teaching of ‘The
Christ’ (a real person) who died and rose from the dead. There are a number of
curious statements in the teachings of Jesus Christ and writings of the gospels
that requires our understanding to see how it is possible for the Church to
have its decreed doctrines and I will list a few here:

John 14:26

But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my
name, he will teach you all things and bring all things to your mind,
whatsoever I shall have said to you.

John 16:11-13

And of judgment: because the prince of this world is already judged.
I have yet many things to say to you: but you cannot bear them now. But when
he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will teach you all truth.

John 21:25

But there are also many other things which Jesus did which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written.

In the Old Testament, the Israelites were
guided by the law of the prophets, in the New Testament Christ says in Matthew
5: 17 “Do not think that I have come to
abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil
them.” However, this law was not to remain on dead stone for the reverence
of unthinking men but to be written by God on the hearts of the faithful. The
New Testament thus brought the law of faith to those that walk by the Spirit of
God, of whom St Paul refers to as the Temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19).
Where the law was to keep people from what not to believe, thus in the New
Testament, it is the doctrine of Jesus Christ that accomplishes that.

If we believe that Jesus Christ is God, then
we must therefore believe that He is as He claimed “The Truth”. If we believe this then we should believe Him when He
says, “If you love me, keep my
commandments” (John 14:15). One of these commands was to ordain St Peter as
the prince of the apostles (Matt 16:19) to whom we must listen, the symbol of
our unity (Isaiah 22:22).

Thus looking at all this we must conclude
therefore that the Church is the mystical Body of Christ, with Christ Himself as
the Head and the Pope as the visible rock, the Vicar of Christ on earth. We
must also conclude that the faith is guided by the doctrine of the Church that
is inspired by the Holy Spirit from the first Pentecost right down to our day
through the Pope. Thus, St Paul would say “…you
ought to behave yourself in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.”

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I am a South African Catholic who was disabled by a rare lung disease at age 42. Need bilateral sequential lung transplant. Took up blogging to keep busy because I am tethered to an oxygen machine 24/7 and restricted in my activity.

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